120 BECOMING KING King invited Rustin to participate in nearly all MIA events during his visit. The two men also had several extensive discussions regarding the principle of nonviolence. A few days after Rustin’s arrival, Glenn Smiley, a white FOR official, joined Rustin in Montgomery. Like Rustin, Smiley had the opportunity to spend significant time with King discussing the principles of the movement, including the relevance of Gandhi’s lead- ership and ideas to what was happening in Montgomery. According to Smiley’s reflections on the conversations, King admitted regarding Gan- dhi, “I will have to say that I know very little about the man.” King had heard of Gandhi many times at Morehouse, but he had never studied his 11 thought in depth. Soon after Smiley’s arrival, a letter came to him from New York in- forming him that Randolph and others had decided Rustin needed to leave Montgomery, in part due to a lukewarm response to his presence by many in leadership with the MIA. Several local leaders feared Rustin wanted to influence the direction of the movement and receive credit for some of its successes: “There is some danger that Bayard is indicating that he has had more to do with what is happening, than he actually has.” Although Smiley proved less forceful and abrasive to the MIA leadership, he shared a paternalistic attitude toward those in Montgomery: “we can learn from their courage and plain earthly devices for building morale, etc., but they can learn more from us, for being so new at this, King runs out of ideas quickly and does the old things again and again. He wants help, and we can give it to him without attempting to run the move- ment.” Rustin and Smiley would both be significant figures in continuing to shape and develop King’s thoughts and philosophy regarding nonvio- lence by providing a philosophical framework for what was happening in Montgomery. Their impact on the boycott itself was minimal, how- ever. Although King was not a complete advocate of nonviolence prior to the boycott, he passionately expressed a commitment to an ethic of love and nonviolence in both the December 1955 Holt Street address and in his unprepared remarks following the bombing of his home in January 1956. Rustin and Smiley helped sand and polish King’s philosophy of nonviolence, yet it was the people’s willingness to boycott Montgomery’s buses that brought King’s nonviolent leanings to the surface in the first 12 place.